Created: 7 September 2006
Updated: 6 November 2018
(NICAP.org)
Quote from the UFO report:
“This is a 34-page chronology (increased from
11-pages) of UFO incidents and events for 1966, the beginning of the ‘Mother of
All UFO Waves’, which lasted throughout 1966 and 1967. Our thanks for these
chronologies must go to our documentation team: Richard Hall (the original
chronology from UFOE II), William Wise (Project Blue Book Archive), Dan Wilson
(archive researcher), and Brad Sparks (Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue
Book Unknowns). Last, but not least, our thanks to Jean Waskiewicz who created
the online NICAP DBase (NSID) that helped make it possible to link from the
cases to the reports themselves.
Three notable events stand out among the others are
two sightings; the Dexter and Hillsdale (MI) sightings of March 20-21 (Frank
Manor [sic], etc.) and the
Portage County (OH) incident of April 17 (Deputies Spauer and Neff), and the event
being the writing of the ‘Trick would be’ memo by Robert Low on Aug. 9th. It is
extremely interesting that both 1966 and 1967 include many sightings near
missile sites, and in 1966 the US
reached a peak of 31,700 of stockpiled nuclear warheads. For more on the
1966-1967 sighting wave, serious researchers should get their copy of this report:
‘Alien Invasion or Human Fantasy? The 1966-67 UFO Wave’ (Richard Hall). For
information on missile deployment, see To Defend & Deter. (1)
Francis Ridge
NICAP Site Coordinator
Jan. 1966; Popular Science Article
‘Why I Believe in Flying Saucers’, by MacKinlay
Kantor, Pulitzer Prize winning author of ‘Andersonville’.
The noted writer, co-author with Gen. Curtis E. Lemay of ‘Mission
with LeMay. My Story’, tells of the strange
personal sighting that convinced him that UFOs are real. (Copy provided by Ole
Jonny Brænne)
Jan. 12, 1966; Sagan Requests Materials
Dr. Carl Sagan requests information from Blue Book on
sightings. The Tridade
Island case is referred
to and the Kelley/Hopkinsville case was requested also.
February 1966
Dr. Brian O’Brien heads a panel of the AF Scientific
Advisory Board that completes a review of Project Blue Book and recommends that
the AF contract with several universities to conduct UFO studies. (Sparks)
March 31, 1966; JANAP 146(E)
Joint Army Navy Air Publication 146(E), changed from
146(D) of Feb. 1, 1959. Added that photographs should be sent to the Director
of Naval Intelligence. Also added special reporting instruction for
unidentifiable objects. (See JANAP 146 History and Evolution).
Minuteman II ICBM Deployed to Five SAC Bases
In 1966 the Minuteman II ICBM was deployed to SAC
bases: Malmstrom Air Force Base, Ellsworth Air Force Base, Minot Air Force
Base, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, and Whiteman Air Force Base. Malmstrom Air
Force Base was also selected as the location for an additional Minuteman
squadron, and LFs and LCFs were consequently constructed at this base. The
first Minuteman II was deployed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, in
August 1965. In
early 1966 UFOs were being reported at these same SAC bases.
April 5, 1966
House Armed Services Committee conducts the first and
only public hearing by U.S. Congress ever held on UFO’s. Was a result of the
nationwide controversy generated by AF consultant J. Allen Hynek’s ‘swamp gas’
explanation for the Hillsdale sightings.
AF is severely criticized by the Congressmen, including future President
Gerald Ford.
The AF is slated to soon test a long-delayed highly
classified sensor system which will obviate the need for collection of
anecdotal UFO reports by an ever more embarrassing Project Blue Book. The plan
for the sensor system and eventual closure of Blue Book was approved years
before, on July 28, 1952, but numerous technical and budgetary delays kept
giving Blue Book reprieves from termination.
Now, the AF command decides that for PR purposes after the tremendous
beating it received in the press, from the public and now from Congress over
its inept UFO explanations that it needs a scientific fig-leaf to cover its
closure of Blue Book. This results in the contract to University of Colorado
in October 1966. (Sparks)
Beginning on May 7, 1966, and throughout the rest of
1966 and into 1967, the Air Force replaced the Minuteman I Bs with Minuteman
IIs at Whiteman AFB ICBM Complex.
June 6, 1966
AF Foreign Technology Division (FTD) officials decide
to leak the AF-manipulated CIA Robertson Panel Report with Minutes and Comments
report (Durant Memo) to visiting Navy scientist Dr. James McDonald, who was
working under an ONR (Office of Naval Research) contract. The AF evidently
wanted to make the CIA look bad when the report was inevitably hushed up by the
CIA which complained that AF did not clear this declassification with the CIA.
Fearing that McDonald was part of an ulterior Navy plot to make the AF look
bad, this big show of AF openness and pretense of trying to overcome excessive
CIA secretiveness would serve to make the AF look good instead. As an added
bonus this sugar-coating of feigned AF openness in trying to release the
Robertson Panel report actually covered a poison pill inside, since the
Robertson Panel report was itself an AF-manipulated, virulently debunking
anti-UFO document which set forth all of the AF's desired anti-UFO PR positions
which had been systematically planted on the CIA and the Panel back in 1952 and
1953. (Sparks)
June 8, 1966
McDonald blows up at Hynek. After two days (June 6-7)
of examining hundreds of Blue Book files and discussions with top AF generals,
officers and scientists at FTD, McDonald concluded that the Blue Book effort
was incompetent and scientifically next-to-worthless. McDonald visited Hynek,
Dr. Jacques Vallee and William Powers at Northwestern University,
expecting to join forces to confront the AF over its UFO policies, after
McDonald had been falsely told by Prof. Charles B. Moore on April 28, 1966,
that Hynek supposedly wanted to confront the AF over UFO’s. Instead, Hynek was
flabbergasted at McDonald and had no intention or idea of confronting the AF,
which increasingly frustrated McDonald until he blew up at Hynek and pounded on
the table. Vallee commented in his diary that ‘an entire era has come to a
crashing end. This man [McDonald] has many contacts, many ideas, and is afraid
of nothing.’ Afterward McDonald phones Moore and demands to know what was going on and Moore admitted he ‘had
not been entirely honest’ (=lied) about Hynek wanting to confront the AF, as
McDonald later recorded. It was all a setup by Moore, evidently designed to get the two
leading scientist investigators of UFO’s at each other’s throats so they would
not join forces. Had McDonald and Hynek formed an alliance it would have
threatened to turn official UFO policy into dust. (Sparks)
Aug. 9, 1966; Low ‘Trick Would Be’ Memo
The half-million-dollar ‘trick’ to make Americans
believe the Condon committee was conducting an objective investigation. Memo
written by Robert Low to James Archer and Thurston Manning, University of Colorado,
to take on the evaluation of the Air Force Project Blue Book investigation,
with the negative conclusions already planned.
Aug. 16, 1966; Various states - Minnesota,
North Dakota, Wisconsin
Sightings and radarscope photo? Newspaper clippings
are the apparent source, but no details this date for events in Wisconsin. (See below
for Minnesota and North Dakota incidents possibly related to
news release.)
Aug. 24, 1966; Minuteman Missile Site, Minot AFB
[Grano? Carpio?], ND (BBU)
10 p.m. Airman saw and reported by radio a
multi-colored light high in the sky. Strike team sent to his location confirmed
the object. Second object, white, was seen to pass in front of clouds. Radar
detected and tracked an object. Sightings made by 3 different Minuteman ICBM
missile sites. Radio interference was noted by teams sent to locations where
object was hovering at ground level. (Vallée Magonia 791; FUFOR Index)
October 7, 1966 - University of Colorado
UFO Project Announcement
Formation sponsored by the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research.
Background: Two official Jan. 1967 letters (and press
release) illustrating the purpose of the CU Project
Oct. 14, 1966 - Operations and Training (re-issue of
previous versions)
The Inspector General Brief - Number 21, Volume XVIII,
14 Oct. 1966
Unidentified Flying Objects (CUFON)
November 1, 1966 -
Colorado
Project Begins
Official beginning of the University of Colorado UFO
Project study sponsored by Air Force Office of
Scientific Research.
Background: Two official Jan. 1967 letters (and press
release) illustrating the purpose of the CU Project
Dec. 17, 1966: Saturday Evening Post article, ‘Are
Flying Saucers Real?’
Dec. 19, 1966 - Department of State AIRGRAM
Sent to Embassy, Buenos
Aires, for Scientific Attaché, reporting the Nov. 12
sighting by local astronomer. (John Schuessler)”
Wikipedia article: “Minot Air Force Base”:
Related posts:
realtvufos.blogspot.com/search?q=Minot,+North+Dakota
Aerial view of Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota
(wikimedia.org photo)
Active LGM-30 Minuteman (ICBM) deployment, 2010
(text by Wikipedia) (wikimedia.org)
(wikimedia.org image)
Satellite
photo of Minot, North Dakota (tageo.com)
(tageo.com photo)
James Alton McDivitt,
